BOYHOOD (Richard Linklater) *OPENING NIGHT FILM
An extraordinary experiment in cinema narrative, Boyhood charts the progress of its protagonist, Mason (Ellar Coltrane, in a remarkable debut performance) from the ages of 6 through 18. Shot semi-secretly over the course of 12 years, from 2002 to 2013, Boyhood shares some similar aspects with other narrative and documentary films, such as Michael Apted’s “Up” series, Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel films, and Linklater’s own Before Sunrise trilogy. But what Linklater does here with Boyhood is truly unprecedented, in which marking the passing time and seeing the characters age authentically without artifice is intensely wedded to a consistent, sustained narrative. Linklater admirably refuses to graft pre-fabricated drama onto his scenario, showing us that ordinary life itself is full of compelling drama.
(June 18, 7pm)
SNOWPIERCER (Bong Joon-ho) *CENTERPIECE
My great fear going into Bong Joon-ho's first (mostly) English-language feature was that it would be a compromised, watered-down version of what he's previously done so well, and Bong would become "a shadow of his former shadow," to paraphrase John Hurt's character in the film. Oh, me of little faith. I'm glad to report that this big-budget, multinational production finds Bong emerging with his artistic integrity, consistency, and audaciousness fully intact. Based on a French graphic novel depicting a dystopian ice age, and set on an endlessly moving train, Snowpiercer is a formally brilliant, sharp depiction of class differences, with humor sitting side by side with brutal violence and poignant emotion, making this completely congruent with Bong's previous work. Bong's films have gotten bigger and more ambitious, but fortunately, they haven't lost their soul.
(June 25, 7:30pm)
THEY CAME TOGETHER (David Wain) *SPOTLIGHT
Wain and co-writer Michael Showalter, of The State and Wet Hot American Summer fame, embark on the ultimate shooting-fish-in-a-barrel parody: satirizing the romantic comedy. Wain and Showalter pull out every cliché and tired trope of the genre – the hatred-turns-to-love relationship dynamic, the wisecracking best friends, tempest-in-a-teacup romantic complications, the wedding-altar intervention – and holds it up for extremely self-aware ridicule. And although stars Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler are game and quite funny performers, and the film has some genuinely funny scenes, They Came Together feels frustratingly slight and underachieving, mostly content to simply present and acknowledge all the clichés without transcending and truly subverting them.
(June 23, 7:30pm)
STATIONS OF THE ELEVATED (Manfred Kirchheimer)
This 45-minute city symphony, which premiered at the 1981 New York Film Festival, was one of the first films to acknowledge graffiti art as artistic expressions of marginalized and neglected communities, and not simply as a public menace or a symbol of urban decay. Set to the gospel-inflected music of Charles Mingus and the vocals of Aretha Frankin, Stations of the Elevated is a lyrical and, as originally shot on 16mm color reversal stock, quite visually beautiful piece, elevating (as per the title) the graffiti that adorned subway trains and rail yards to quasi-religious significance. Kirchheimer also cannily contrasted the creative and personal expressions of graffiti art with the bland corporate advertising on the giant billboards that existed alongside them.
(June 27, 8pm)
ELLIE LUMME (Ignatiy Vishnevetsky)
Vishnevetsky is one of the best and most intelligent film critics currently working, and he brings that intelligence to this miniature gem, his first narrative film. It clocks in at a mere 42 minutes, but proves to be more satisfying than features at multiple times its length. Ellie (Allison Torem), a young woman who can often be unpleasantly cynical, meets Ned (Stephen Cone), a slightly older man who is more than Ellie’s match in cynicism and sarcasm. While she is initially intrigued by him, she eventually rejects him as a romantic partner. Unfortunately for Ellie, Ned turns out to be the sort who isn't willing to take no for an answer.
Vishnevetsky infuses the Chicago locations of his tale with a starkly edited atmosphere that becomes increasingly unsettling as the film progresses, and he very subtly introduces literature-inspired supernatural elements to mesmerizing, and quietly chilling, effect. The editing rhythms, scene staging, and elliptical dialog often recall Rohmer and Bresson. Ellie Lumme marks a fine, and quite promising, debut.
(June 21, 1:30pm)
THE HEART MACHINE (Zachary Wigon)
Relationships, running the gamut from romantic connections to random hook-ups with strangers, as experienced in our current digital age, are invested with a moody, subtle menace in Zachary Wigon’s remarkable debut film. A love story that becomes a paranoid thriller in the vein of such 70s touchstones at The Conversation, the film starts innocuously enough.
Cody (John Gallagher, Jr.) is carrying on a long-distance relationship, via Skype, with Virginia (Kate Lyn Sheil), who, she says, is studying abroad in Berlin. They talk late into the night and converse frequently, and even have virtual sex with each other, doing the normal relationship activities with an intimacy that lack only physical proximity. However, certain details begin to not add up to Cody, and he soon becomes convinced that Virginia is lying about being in Berlin. Virginia’s true nature is gradually revealed as events take their course, and Cody’s obsession with getting to the truth of matters begins to take over his life.
Wigon creates an unsettling and poignant mood, as he vividly depicts how our digital devices and modern modes of communication can conceal as much as they reveal. The film is graced by two fine central performances by Gallagher and Sheil that masterfully navigate the shifting emotional states of their characters.
(June 21, 6:30pm)
FOR THE PLASMA (Bingham Bryant and Kyle Molzan)
This very curious low-fi, 16mm shot, science fiction tale concerns two young women (Annabelle Lemieux and Rosalie Lowe) who are in a house in the woods of rural Maine who study CCTV footage of trees, supposedly to check for forest fires, but really to predict financial trends for unseen stock-trader employers. Lots of inchoate weirdness overhangs this scenario, but everything is so vague and undefined that it’s difficult to know what to make of it all. It also doesn’t help that everyone in the cast delivers their lines so stiffly and robotically that any sort of emotional resonance is nil. Perhaps that’s the point, but in the end there’s too much here that feels undeveloped and not fully worked out.
(June 21, 9:30pm)
EVOLUTION OF A CRIMINAL (Darius Clark Monroe)
This compelling documentary analyzes a bank robbery, and the aftermath of such an event, from an unusual standpoint: as a first person account created by the perpetrator himself. Monroe, with incredible perspicacity and candor, charts his own transformation from honors student to gun-toting bank robber. This act didn’t originate from criminal impulses, but from a desire to ameliorate his family’s extremely strained financial situation.
Monroe interviews family and friends (including his robbery accomplices), as well as tracking down customers who were at the bank that day, to ask for their forgiveness. Monroe puts a human face on the too often abstract issues of race, incarceration, and the possibility of rehabilitation and redemption. His very personal documentary tackles complex moral, social and racial issues in a way that provokes profound empathy.
(June 23, 7pm)
THOU WAST MILD AND LOVELY (Josephine Decker)
Decker follows up her inimitable debut, the psychological horror film Butter on the Latch, with this erotic, psychosexual film, inspired by John Steinbeck. Taking place on a remote farm on the Kentucky countryside that very quickly jettisons its idyllic, bucolic quality for something much darker, Decker (aided by Ashley Connor’s impressionistic cinematography) confirms her status as one of the most fascinating and intuitive filmmakers around.
Akin (director-actor Joe Swanberg) is hired as a farmhand, and is quickly drawn sexually to Sarah (Sophie Traub) who often parades in skimpy clothing, and has a rather disturbing relationship with her father Jeremiah (Robert Longstreet). Akin embarks on an affair with Sarah, despite the fact that he is married with a young son. When Akin’s wife comes to visit, the stage is set for a violent confrontation.
Decker creates an unsettling atmosphere, in which intense eroticism is intertwined with much darker elements. Time-lapse photography, archival footage, and a careening, often out-of-focus camera, perfectly dovetails with the psychological turmoil of her characters.
(June 23, 9:30pm)
SOMETHING, ANYTHING (Paul Harrill)
A young woman (Ashley Shelton) experiences a spiritual crisis when she is confronted with a personal tragedy in Harrill’s debut feature. She is compelled to get rid of the trappings of suburban family life: her real estate job, her new husband, and all her old friends go by the wayside as she goes on an ascetic journey inspired by an old classmate whom she seeks to reconnect with.
While Harrill’s idea of a person rejecting a consumerist, materially upwardly striving existence is potentially intriguing, the execution isn’t quite up to its subject. The main problem is that Shelton isn’t a strong enough actress to make what is mostly an interior transformation seem convincing enough for us to truly relate to or empathize with her character.
(June 26, 7pm)
OTHER MONTHS (Nick Singer)
Other Months takes the over-familiar, more or less cliché circumstances of post-collegial aimlessness and adds some subtly surreal touches of to create something truly special, a film that manages to compellingly visualize existential crisis. Divided into three sections – February, July, and November – the film follows its protagonist Nash (Christopher Bonewitz) as he pursues his writing aspirations while indulging in hedonistic partying and sexual encounters, and has relationships with three women (one of which ends as the film begins). Odd imagery, such as the opener with an animal-masked silhouette in a red room, and Nash holding a drowned hare in a flooded basement, as well as an intriguingly moody atmosphere, elevate Other Months well above navel-gazing depictions of floundering twenty-somethings.
(June 26, 9:30pm)
HAPPY CHRISTMAS (Joe Swanberg)
Actor-director Joe Swanberg, one of America's finest filmmakers, continues to refine and expand his art with each release, and his latest, Happy Christmas, is no exception. Shot in the warm tones of 16mm film, lending the images a pleasingly grainy and domestic quality, this new film, as with Swanberg's others, brilliantly melds autobiographical details and performer improvisation to create a funny and beautifully acted feature. Swanberg proves an astute observer of family and sibling relationships, and beautifully conveys the joys and crises that arise.
Swanberg plays Jeff, a film director married to Kelly (Melanie Lynskey), a budding novelist who mostly abandoned that pursuit, as her time is mostly spent raising their young son Jude (Jude Swanberg, the director's two-year old son). Jeff's younger sister Jenny (Anna Kendrick) comes to visit, just coming off a breakup. Jenny fully intends to earn her keep by helping with the baby and other stuff around the house. But Jenny turns out to be quite irresponsible, getting blind drunk at a party on her first night there, and having to be taken home by Jeff. This deeply angers Kelly, but their relationship soon improves, especially as Jenny and her friend Carson (Lena Dunham) encourage Kelly to restart her novel-writing career. Hilariously, Jenny comes up with the idea of Kelly writing a Fifty Shades of Grey-type erotic potboiler, a subject far removed from Kelly's more literary aspirations.
Happy Christmas, appropriately to its title (although the film's being released this summer), is life-affirming and uplifting, not in a cheaply sentimental way, but in a way that fully acknowledges human flaws and foibles and how strong familial relationships can help us through them. The film boasts great performances all around, especially by Kendrick, who does some of her best work here.
(June 27, 7pm)
